Nobel Rumours

In the NYT blog Paper Cuts, rumours about this year’s running for the Nobel Prize in Literature:

It’s a list that ignores a lot of the names that are often thrown around this time of year – Margaret Atwood, Nuruddin Farah, the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, and remember all that talk about Bob Dylan? Here’s Rudbeck:

Hot tips from Deep Throats:

Ko Un, Korean poet

Adonis, Syrian poet

Lukewarm tips:

Amos Oz, Israeli novelist

Don DeLillo, American novelist

Cormac McCarthy, American novelist

Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes, Latin American novelists, to share it

Not a snowball’s chance in hell:

Jackie Collins

Adonis has, of course, been a rumoured front runner many times before. Perhaps the umpteenth time is a charm. In the meanwhile one of his short poems , “Death” (translated by Samuel Hazo), with all its paganism reminiscent of Cavafy:

“We must make gods or die.

We must kill gods or die,”

whisper the lost stones

in their lost kingdom.